A Dallas-based foundation has handed two albums belonging to
Adolf Hitler, which catalog art and furniture stolen by the Nazis
during World War II, to the National Archives.

The albums were given to the Monuments Men Foundation for the
Preservation of Art by the relatives of two American soldiers who
had taken them from Hitler's home in the Bavarian Alps as
souvenirs, Associated
Press says.

The Foundation's founder and president, Robert M. Edsel, is
quoted as saying that the albums were "prized possessions of
Adolf Hitler."

US News names the American soldiers as Cpl. Albert
Lorenzetti and Pfc. Yerke Zane Larson, and says that the
leather-bound books had become family heirlooms, but their
original purpose was unknown.

It was only when the albums were donated to the Monuments Men
Foundation that their significance was realized, and it was
decided that they should be handed over to the National Archives.

The National Archives currently possesses a total of 41
albums, My
Fox 9 says. The 39 others were discovered in Germany in
May 1945 and later used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials.

They were compiled by a special Nazi task force called the
Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, The
New York Times explains, who were charged with documenting
objects taken from French museums and private collections for a
museum Hitler planned to build in his hometown Linz in Austria.